Logo designers compete to create a new oil-spill themed icon for BP

Does BP’s now-familiar yellow-and-green sunflower logo need an update? Joe Daley thinks so. As the founder of a website that acts as a clearinghouse for logo designers around the world, Daley reckons the British oil giant’s corporate icon should reflect the spreading oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. So Daley’s launched an online contest to find an appropriate replacement logo.

These kinds of logo competitions are nothing new; that’s how the website works to match designers with businesses, with the businesses paying the prize to the winning design. Daley himself put up the $200 in prize money for the BP logo redesign contest — BP has nothing to do with it — to raise awareness of the spill.

The idea evolved after he was chatting online with several designers about the BP oil spill, and a couple of them asked, “What spill?” “That’s when I decided to get it out in a more creative way,” Daley said by telephone from Columbus, Ohio.

BP’s conduct before and after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon blowout prompted the move, Daley said. “I’ve been in business for 12 years, and I know mistakes happen … but with the violations they’ve had and not having a backup plan … I’m not very forgiving.”

The designers — some 6,000 use the site, Daley said — came through with some vivid ideas, putting red devil horns on the sunflower, reshaping the logo to mimic a biohazard icon and adding dripping black oil to the image.

The competition closes on June 12 at 10 p.m. EDT. Logo designers and the general public can vote to pick the winner.